Does anyone have experience using Tilapia in the North? I am worried that after they die in fall, they will rot under the ice and cause an oxygen shortage.

I've done tilapia a few years ago for 2 summers. They were great to have. They ate my algae (and will eat yours if you stock in sufficient numbers). The only downside is that their real strength in eating algae is if you can have them reproduce. A million young TP are better than 20 pounds of big adults. Our 'growing season' is so short that I'm not sure you will have enough time to see eggs hatch and young grow up.

You should stock them when water temps are warm (for us that means at least mid may) and they don't get revved up with eating and procreating till water temps are balmy 70 or higher. They then 'tap out' in MI in about Mid November. It is a short year for them.

Don't worry about rotting. If you have crayfish, turtles or land based predators like herons, raccons, mink, otters they will happily clean them all up for you. I suspect even owls and raptors will pick them off for you. I think I only had one visible floater and the rest probably sank and were cleaned up by the turtles.

Thanks for the input. I'm currently breeding some, and should have about 1,000 fingerlings by late May. I was told that would be about right for a 5 acre foot pond. Not sure if that source was counting on reproduction in addition to the 1,000, or not. I've got plenty of scavengers for the floaters, it's the sinkers I'm worried about. I hope the LMB will eat them when they get lethargic in fall.

Stocking fingerlings in a pond full of LMB is always a risky proposition. And I don't think they will reach breeding age in a single season either.

I should clarify, I had no predators in my pond when I used them and I stocked about 20 pounds of fish mostly in the 4-5" range and a few 6" ones. They grew nicely that summer but I can't say a fingerling would have had time to grow to adult size.

if you want to experiment with feeding them pellets and seeing how they grow you would want to put a tank or blocking net in your pond to protect them from predation and see how they actually do. The other advantage of this approach is it would be easy to get them back out if you desire when water is cold and have a fish fry!